Embodiments of the inventive subject matter generally relate to the field of wireless networks, and, more particularly, selecting different wireless link rate selection algorithms for different classes of traffic.
The 802.11e amendment to the 802.11 standard defines quality of service (QoS) enhancements for wireless LAN applications to accommodate different priorities for traffic. Wi-Fi Multimedia (WMM), which is based on 802.11e, prioritizes wireless traffic into four media access control categories-voice, video, best effort and background. The voice and video traffic categories are the highest priority traffic categories, while the best effort and background traffic categories are lower priority traffic categories. The voice and video traffic categories have higher priorities because voice and video traffic are more sensitive to channel quality. Best effort traffic (e.g., data traffic for web browsing) is less sensitive to channel quality. The background traffic category has the lowest priority because background traffic (e.g., data traffic for file downloads and print jobs) is the least sensitive to channel quality. This traffic prioritization scheme generally allows voice and video data to be transmitted before best effort and background data.
A transmitting station applies a link rate selection algorithm to the channel shared by the different categories of traffic. The link rate selection algorithm aggressively seeks the fastest possible link rate, which can lead to bursty transmissions.